Friday, February 03, 2017

Top Chef: Sudden Death Again

Normally, the excess of sudden death quickfires would be eerily reminiscent of the Vegas season where they kept trying to gin up (pun intended) excitement by constantly adding extra elements to the quickfires, which, in my opinion, generally serve two purposes, a chance to give the chefs a silly challenge that doesn't fit well into an elimination challenge (like be blindfolded and taste weird things from last week) and/or to give one chef an easy chance for an advantage. Sure, there are chefs who are going to do better in fast swift challenges, but as it gets whittled down, that catches up to everyone. And of course, these are specifically contrived circumstances that have no actual bearing on your ability to make great food.

But in this case I did feel like there were some chefs I'd be happy to see go, so why not. Although, poor Shirley, I can only imagine that she knew there would be some sort of challenge when she took the motion sickness pills, and she had hoped that being loopy would make her be a better chef, than vomiting on TV would be. But while she ended, up in the bottom three of the quickfire, she made it out of the cookoff, as did Sylva, leaving Casey to go home. (Or to Last Chance Kitchen. Which is starting to sound like a weird western themed bar.)

And then Shirley and Sheldon made it to the top of the creative brunch elimination challenge, possibly helped by the pills wearing off. Sylva, John, and Brooke had problems with execution, to varying degrees, although John's seemed to be more of promise, in that he used the word hash and created something not crispy but ultimately tasty. Where Brooke and Sylva had both had execution problems, and in the end while Brooke's also seemed to be a doomed idea, it was more edible than Sylva's and so the last rookie went home. I'm sorry to see Sylva go. I'm also sorry that John is getting so much talking head time, and I confess, hoping that ends soon. Especially since I've been here before, thinking I like 75 percent of the chefs remaining, what could go wrong? I realize despite his attitude issues in some of the challenges, John hasn't been terrible, but i stand by my right to decide this for myself based on a heavily edited TV show.